Welcome to the blogspot of HEAL, the Hospital Equity & Access Lobby in the Blue Mountains, near Sydney. This page exists to give our community access to information and updates regarding the delivery of services at Blue Mountains District ANZAC Memorial Hospital. Sadly, in recent years our hospital has reduced the range of basic, primary health care services it provides to Mountains residents.
We need to keep our hospital functioning and your support is vital.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Hospital's CT scanner breaks again

The computed tomography (CT) scanner - used to diagnose everything from fractures to cancer - was broken for more than a week. Doctors at the Katoomba hospital said the scanner was so old it had been considered obsolete since 2008, and it had broken down more than once.

While it was broken doctors had to transfer patients - potentially including emergency patients - to Nepean Hospital, an hour's drive away in Penrith. But a spokeswoman for the Sydney West Area Health Service said only four people had been transferred to Nepean and none were emergency patients.

A visiting medical officer at the hospital, who did not wish to be named, said the broken CT scanner delayed patient diagnoses: ''It affects patient management and safety.'' The chairman of AMA NSW's hospital practice committee, Brian Owler, said it should be replaced immediately.Some staff and some in the community have criticised Blue Mountains hospital saying it is not given resources to function fully.

The Blue Mountains deputy mayor, Janet Mays, said the hospital was ''being downgraded essentially to a first-aid post''.

The area health spokeswoman said there were plans to replace the scanner by the end of the year.

Primary Health Care

"There is hardly any health system reform in developed countries in the past five years which has not given PHC higher relative importance…It is clear that PHC continues to be a fundamental component of health policy, and of health systems, in most of the world." (WHO 2003)